The French election – nationalism is not a dirty word.

Via Tim Newman a post by Francis Turner on the second round of the French presidential election. The article is typical of what I am seeing across conservative commentary on the election; apparently both choices are equally awful. That Macron will be a disaster goes without saying. But it is the antipathy towards Le Pen from conservatives outside France that I find somewhat depressing. Turner has this to say about Le Pen:

Ms Le Pen is, fundamentally, a nativist. Many of her statements sound remarkably similar to ones made by British figures like Nigel Farage. She wants to limit immigration to France, she wants to halt the erosion of French culture by foreign influences, primarily Islamic ones but also Hollywood, and she wants France to control it’s own destiny and thus leave the Euro and the EU. She has been particularly outspoken on what she sees as the pernicious influence of Islam on France and the way that the French state has ceded areas of its cities to control by immigrants from primarily Islamic cultures.

So far so good it seems. But then Turner falls into the same trap that everyone else on the Right is making when observing the French state of affairs. The economy.

If that was all then I’d have no hesitation in recommending her, unfortunately it isn’t. She’s also extremely protectionist and wants to massively expand the French state rather than raise money through privatization.

I have a few points to make here. First of all, this election is about three things – immigration, immigration, and immigration. Economics is downstream of culture and if you can’t get the culture right then you won’t have any economics; good, bad, or otherwise. Turner doesn’t mention it but Le Pen apparently wants to retain France’s extremely generous public service numbers and perks. A lot of other commentators have complained about this which leads to my next point:

Le Pen can only win if she does in fact say that she will not touch France’s generous social welfare and public service systems. She is counting on those people who would vote for Satan himself as long as he promised to keep these intact, as well as dealing with France’s immigration and cultural issues. If I were running for this election I would be using exactly the same tactics as Le Pen and holding the same policy lines in these matters. All that counts is getting elected and stopping the Islamification of France. She needs every vote she can get because so much is stacked against her.

After she gets elected we’ll see exactly what her real thoughts are on these matters. I doubt that it is as she is portraying.

But even if these are her exact policy positions, what are you guys expecting? You don’t just want the Left to lose. You only want to win if your candidate is absolutely perfect on every policy matter. This is just ridiculous and it is why these people still don’t get Donald Trump. Culture is all that counts at this point and on culture Le Pen is as good as it gets and better than we could ever have expected.

Turner himself admits that electing Macron will continue France’s slow decline but then espouses to vote for him anyway! France has to take its medicine. And the longer it puts it off the nastier it will be. Either France elects Le Pen now or they will elect someone who has a real chance of being on the extreme edge in five years time.

She wants to reverse large chunks of recent globalization, especially the global trade in agricultural produce, and to strongly encourage local consumption of foodstuff.

When are these people going to realise that the new ground is now globalists versus nationalists? Macron is a globalist, Le Pen is a nationalist. It’s one or the other. The old rules don’t count anymore because the Left broke them while the Right sat back and did nothing. Nationalism is not a dirty word. But stick civic in front of it and it turns into the biggest pile of steaming dung imaginable. That is the fight in which we now find ourselves.

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10 thoughts on “The French election – nationalism is not a dirty word.”

Carl-Edward

Even assuming that Le Pen wins, nothing she may do will matter very much, unless she expels the immigrants. What does it matter what the rest of the world may purport to think? The rest of the world does not pay France’s bills.

I’m struggling to imagine a scenario anywhere in the western world where native populations expel anyone at all. I suspect we’ve reached a point where most of the soft, lazy people in the west would rather cower quietly in their homes than do anything ‘mean’. Two generations of political correctness has sapped the confidence and cultural assertiveness of the west. Intentionally, of course.

Le Pen winning would shock me far more than Brexit or Trump beating Hitllery. It’s a nice dream, but that’s all it is. Even if she does it would take a miracle (and I mean a *real* one) to eject enough invaders to make a difference. Plus the EU (read Germany) would fight her tooth and nail. Believe me, those functionaries in Brussels have leaned well from Brexit.

Besides, the heart of Briton and Europe was excised long ago. Banning guns and free speech were just symptoms of the greater sickness of decades of Fabien socialism. The European capon is now just waiting to be thrown into Team Mo’s pot.

We had a discussion a few weeks ago, where your position was along the lines of ‘the only way to beat socialism is with nationalism’. Now it seems, when it’s pointed out that the nationalist candidate actually stands for socialism, you seem to be saying don’t worry about that, it’s the nationalism that is most important.

Mark, you seem to believe that the world is binary, black and white, and inflexible. I, on the other hand, do not. The greater evil is immigration and invasion of the host culture. This is in orders of magnitude far more dangerous. One only has to examine historical time lines to see this. The welfare state caused a slow and gradual decline in Sweden over 70 years that was almost imperceptible. But immigration has taken the country to the edge of the cliff at a much faster rate.

So of course I am going to favor a candidate who believes in cutting off immigration and protecting the national culture, even if she is an economic socialist at heart. I will repeat what I wrote in this post – economics is downstream of culture. You worry about the culture first and the economics second. A culture can survive going bust. It can’t survive being culturally defeated.

There’s no disagreement that culture trumps economics. If you have a culture of free thinking, individualism, and self reliance, the economics will take care of themselves. But where we depart is your faith that immigration is the primary threat to culture, and all we have to do is keep out the dirty foreigners and things will come right. My observations, and knowledge of history are at complete odds with that. As we established a few weeks ago, the work ethic of most immigrants (a proxy for culture) is superior to that of soft natives with a growing sense of entitlement, and no idea of the western values and achievements that have made their life possible. Take away the welfare state, and you not only force a change on them, but you ensure that generally the only immigrants that want to come here are the ones that respect the right values to some degree. Immigration is only a problem in the context of (a) the welfare state, and (b) an altruistic foreign policy over decades that has encouraged the Islamic threat. If you know your Roman history, you’ll know that they lasted so long and became such a power not because they put up walls and excluded all foreigners, but because they exported their values and allowed foreigners to become Roman citizens if they bought uncompromisingly into the Roman way. Without that approach they would have been constantly on the defensive, and would have succumbed to the barbarians far earlier.

I re-read your “bludgers” post, and if you have answered it I can’t see where. You say there that the welfare state and bludgers are the primary problem (to which I agree). Now you’re confronted with someone who wants to expand rather than wind back the welfare state, and you’re prepared to forgive that because they’re anti-immigration. I can accept that Le Pen is perhaps the lesser of the two evils, but that’s a long way from your ringing endorsement. The alt-right chickens are coming home to roost I think, as they always do when there’s an intellectual contradiction.

I have neither the time nor the patience to lead you by the hand on this. But I will try one last time, despite devoting an entire post to you and your problem last week.

So I accept all that, but why does that mean we should deny the opportunity for good keen foreigners to show them up, and stop employers engaging who they need to do their businesses remain functioning? Why would we want to deny this opportunity to good keen foreigners so that lazy local losers can have it easy? And more to the point, by what right do we deny the right of businesses to employ who they want to?

The Indians who used to immigrate to Australia were the professional type who maybe smoked a pipe, spoke with an English accent, loved all things western, and who had absolutely no problem blending in. Now we need to erect signs in public showing them how to use a toilet because we’re bringing in masses of backwards peasants. The “good keen foreigners” as you call them are massively outnumbered by these illiterate half savages. This is just one example of foreigners not assimilating at all due to their sheer weight of numbers. The picture you are attempting to paint is of an Australia, (in my case), of thirty years ago. That country no longer exists due to immigration.

As for the rights of businesses to employ whomever they want, that should never go beyond the national interests of a country, and right now it does go beyond it. Contrary to your repeated claims that the alt-right is finished because of this so-called internal contradiction, no such contradiction exists. Vox Day’s 16 points are very clear on this matter. Businesses do not exist outside the laws of a nation, most particularly those concerning the security of its borders.

Your libertarian ideals are outdated and never made any sense anyway. The Z Man has spent the past week completely demolishing libertarianism. Read it and weep. I’m not arguing this with you any further.

You don’t want to argue, so I won’t address the substance of your argument. It is your site after all. But I am going to correct one thing: I do not claim the alt-right are “finished”. They may well be the future. What I’m questioning is whether the future they offer is any better than that offered by left.

If all I had to go on was this post, and worse websites where overt racism is on display, I’d say no, they’re just hastening our descent into the abyss. Your posts are mixture of good and bad, right and wrong – and at times offer some things I can learn from (otherwise I wouldn’t be visiting). I posted mainly because I hoped to help you weed out those contradictions, but this exchange suggests to me you’re not open to that – so I won’t try any longer.

As for supposed takedown of my ‘libertarian’ ideals, I challenge anyone to takedown my actual arguments, not some strawman interpretation of them.